he Sibel Edmonds
v. Department of Justice saga continues as the year 2005 draws to a close.
The only breaking news to come from the ongoing drama is the implication,
published in Vanity Fair, that Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House
of US Representatives, was the recipient of campaign contributions and
assorted bribes from the Turkish-American community. That another US
politician is on the take comes as no surprise. But more on that later.
Sibel’s story may have quietly died from the suffocating oppression of the
US government had it not been for very recent revelations that the US
sanctions and operates interrogation/torture facilities in Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s and Vice President Dick Cheney’s New Europe
(Poland, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, etc.). While the buzz is all around
the Plame-Wilson-Libby-Woodward-Rove-Hadley affair, and the lies that got
the US into Iraq again, the real news is that military and non-military
torture chambers stretching from Mexico to Asia have become standard
operating procedure for the US. Further, the response of official
Washington to the torture expose was not disgust, but a call to prosecute
the whistleblower that leaked the awful news.

Within the remarkable public
revelation from the Washington Post and Human Rights Watch, is the
imprimatur of Rumsfeld and Cheney -- the two crusty Nixon Administration
buddies -- and perhaps the most ruthless and dangerous Americans ever to
hold office in the corporate/government world. They and their disciples
share the view that “conduct unbecoming” does not exist. No law, no
boundary, no moral code, no amount of lives or an outdated parchments like
the US Constitution and Bill of Rights will be a barrier as they push
forward their foreign and domestic agenda for some of the US population,
Turkey and Israel. They hide behind the veil of “the national security of
the United States of America” and label Top Secret/Special
Compartmentalized Information the data that would implicate them, not save
a US soldier in a Humvee, or they slap a State’s Secret order on the likes
of Sibel Edmonds mainly to protect balance sheets and business deals.

Me Ne Frego!

There is a name for this kind
of government-corporation and the society it creates and it is Fascism,
pure and simple. There just isn’t any other way to describe people like
Rumsfeld or Cheney. To that we must add the name Brent Scowcroft. US.
Wikipedia reports that fascism’s appearance in Italy in the 1920’s
(rooted in the term fascio from the 1800’s) marked a new political and
economic system that combined corporatism and nationalism in a state
designed to bind all classes together under a capitalist system. Dissent
was discouraged, political discourse of the time was highly inflammatory,
and the society overly militaristic. Under Mussolini’s dictatorship, from
roughly 1925-1945, the effectiveness of its parliamentary system was
virtually abolished though its forms were publicly preserved.The
opposition was ferried to remote islands far from Italy proper where they
would be tortured and sometimes killed. Mussolini was an active proponent
of preemption. In 1923, he bombed Corfu and later established a puppet
regime in Albania (according to the FBI in 2003, the Albanian Mafia is the
most feared) .

Rumsfeld and Cheney have been
able to push their fascist doctrine into mainstream America and into every
decision making element in the US government. Their spokesman and head
buffoon is George Bush II, who recently stated on his trip to Asia that
criticism of his War in Iraq was irresponsible and unpatriotic, and is
also on the record saying “we do not torture”. One sure sign of fascism is
when the elected chief speaks to his minions almost entirely from the safe
confines of a US military base. These strangely American fascists have
adopted the motto of the Mussolini’s Black Shirts who were the enforcement
arm of his government.. “Me Ne Frego,” or I do not give a damn, they’d say
as they went about brutalizing dissenters, union bosses, journalists, et
al. It’s the kind of attitude that produces “freedom is messy”, “bring ‘em
on” and “people are fungible.”

Italian Fascism was based on
state control of financial/commercial interests and public thought.
American Fascism has done the reverse, outsourcing its mandate, protecting
and defending the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, to corporations and
powerful ideological domestic and foreign interests. These groups make the
key decisions on US domestic and foreign policy. The actors in the stage
production called “the three branches of US government,” give the public
audience a sense that they are somehow involved in staging the production.

It’s this kind of madness
that Sibel Edmonds and those like her are fighting against. They are
trying smash the mirrors and blow away the smoke that clouds the minds of
so many who refuse to acknowledge that the US is rapidly becoming a
reflection of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy.

How Wars are Conducted

A little known news piece by
Bill Conroy of narconews.com takes us to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
There we get a glimpse into how US officials conduct themselves in the War
on Drugs and, in all likelihood, the War on Terror. According to Conroy,
from 2003-2004 twelve people were brutally tortured and murdered in what
came to be known as the House of Death case. Agents from the US Department
of Homeland Security-Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) and the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) were attempting to capture Heriberto
Santillan Tabares, apparently a top dog in Vincente Carrillo Fuente’s
Juarez drug operation. The US agents successfully dropped an informant
into Tabares’ operation. Problem was that the informant ended up gleefully
taking part in the torture and murder of all twelve people. The bigger
problem was that the then Attorney General of the United States, John
Ashcroft, the head of the DEA, and the US government prosecutor wanted to
maintain the informant’s undercover status and his fine torture and murder
credentials so that they could bag Tabares and, later, other drug dealers.
Former DEA agent Sandalio Gonzalez was appalled at this activity and sent
an internal letter to Department of Justice officials. Their immediate
response was to drum him out of the DEA, according to Conroy.

The head of the DEA said that
Gonzalez’s action was “inexcusable” and in testimony lets on that
incompetence and inter-agency squabbling was the real issue, not the fact
that twelve apparently innocent people were murdered with the approval of
the US government. Tandy stated that “there was a substantial issue
between DEA and ICE over the use of the informant…And the jeopardy that
DEA agents and others had been placed in as a result of ICE’s handling of
an informant that the DEA had previously blackballed…It was such a
sensitive issue that…I went personally to brief the Attorney General…”

This bit of news leads us to
Rumsfeld’s Death Star in Arlington, Virginia -- the Pentagon -- and there
into the offices of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Known simply
as The Policy Organization, it is the former home of the notorious neo-con
Douglas Feith. But that’s not the interesting part. Under organizational
titles like Policy, International Security, Homeland Defense, and Special
Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, exist operational elements like
Counternarcotics, Detainees, Combating Terrorism, Homeland Security
Integration, Stability Operations and the Defense Policy Board. Its
leaderships boasts Kissinger and Cheney protégés, stridently pro-Israel
and Turkey supporters, and a former US Phoenix Project operative.

And this is where the
guidelines for the Wars on Terror, Drugs, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
are developed and implemented in the field, more than likely by former
special operations operatives under contract. The Policy Organization has
no problem dealing with psychopathic killers, buying and selling drugs,
dropping white phosphorous on women and children, using the global
black-market to help a “critical” country upgrade its nuclear capability,
or selling out the American people for the sake of profit. The lives of 12
or 1.2 million human beings are inconsequential—nothing more than
expendable extras in the big show. “Sensitive” matters must be classified
or not discussed at all.

Undersecretary of Defense
Eric Edelman (Cheney’s pick) runs The Policy Organization. Not
surprisingly, he’s the former Ambassador to Turkey.

Gobble, Gobble

“Turkey’s long term
commitment to the principles of democracy and their commitment to
undertaking the reforms Europe demanded before even the first round of
accession negotiations -- have produced economic opportunity, stable
political institutions, and the peaceful rule of law. Turkey is proof that
our strategy of spreading democracy in the Islamic world can work,” said
Edelman. Lofty and duplicitous words that are not to be believed. For the
real story, listen to Brent Scowcroft. As head of the American Turkish
Council, he speaks on behalf of US corporations and the Turkish
government.

In September 2005, Scowcroft
sent a letter to Hastert that stated, according to the Armenian National
Committee of America “even discussion of the Armenian Genocide on the
floor of the US House of Representatives would be counter-productive to
the interests of the United States.” Indeed, the letter states in no
uncertain terms that Turkey is at the “center of American’s current and
long term interests…The genocide resolutions encourage those who would
pull Turkey away from the West. The careless use of genocide language
provides and (sic) excuse to do so, delivering a direct blow to American
interests in the region…I strongly urge you to oppose floor
deliberation…of this highly sensitive issue.”

It should be an eye-opener
when former US general and presidential advisor -- now the spokesman for
US businesses and the Turkish government -- asks the “people’s house” to
remain silent on a matter, thoroughly documented in American and British
newspapers of the day, that involved the systematic slaughter of 1.2
million Armenians. If the issue is that important-after all, we’re not
talking about a puny drug war -- then it is likely that Scowcroft told his
Turkish Council members to fill the campaign coffers of the Speaker,
former majority leader Tom DeLay, and current majority leader Roy Blount.
And Scowcroft may have suggested to the Turkish government that it
contract with former US congressmen Stephen Solarz and Robert Livingston
(members of the ATC) to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government in the
US House and Senate. The Turkish newspaper Sabah reported that Hastert was
pressured by AIPAC to defeat another House resolution recognizing the
Armenian Genocide back in the year 2000. Trade associations in Washington,
DC frequently unite on issues and, so it seems, Scowcroft’s ATC and AIPAC
worked together to get rid of the Armenian matter.

Intrepid reporter Jason Vest
writing in The Nation in 2002, noted that Richard Perle and Douglas
Feith worked as foreign registered lobbyists for Turkey back in the late
1980’s and into the 1990’s. They “quietly and deftly kept the [American]
arms sluice to Turkey open” said Vest. Feith had hired former executive
director of AIPAC, Morris Amitay, to assist in the task. The new Feith and
Perle, Solarz and Livingston, have picked up where the largely disgraced
Perle and Feith left off. One thing is for certain though; during Feith’s
reign over The Policy Organization, the ATC and AIPAC had their operative
well-placed and, perhaps, under control.

Black Market Bingo

The ATC and the Turkish
Consulate in Chicago had been under the watchful eye of the FBI since the
late 1990’s and one suspects it still is. But that’s about it since FBI
field agents were told/are told to follow but not arrest suspected Turkish
operatives. The ATC was/is also being monitored by the CIA. For example,
Valerie Plame had attended a number of functions at the ATC and took
several trips to Turkey. The newspaper Hurriyet confirmed that she
was hunting for WMD’s, more likely their components, in a country
well-known for its expertise in pushing products through the black market.
This brings us to some excerpts from the PBS program Frontline:

Oscilloscopes and oscillators manufactured by Tektronix (equipment used to
build missiles and nuclear weapons); and triggered spark gaps manufactured
by PerkinElmer (small cylindrical devices that can be used to spark
nuclear explosions).

Asher
Karni [Israeli businessman in South Africa] writes Zeki Bilmen [Turkish
businessman] of Giza Technologies, a New Jersey-based company that,
according to its Web site, provides "procurement services for state of the
art electronic, electro-mechanical and mechanical components, systems, and
other products related to the Electronics Manufacturing Sector." Karni
asks Bilmen for an update on the EG&G order [triggered spark gaps]. Bilmen
replies that the Tektronix equipment has arrived in New Jersey, but that
he will wait until additional equipment arrives to ship them on, and that
EG&G order has been processed. Bilmen adds in a separate email: "One Good
News regarding the EG&G order [the triggered spark gaps]. NO EXPORT
LICENSE REQUIRED to South Africa. I thought you might want to know."

These excerpts are from
transactional e-mails made between Karni, Bilmen and Humayun Kahn, a
Pakistan operative for the Pakistani military. They are meant to
illustrate the ease with which these products traverse the globe and that,
in all likelihood, are allowed to until a really big fish can be caught.
Turkey’s role in the illicit nuclear transactions and selling off
classified US military data to the highest bidder have been frequently
reported. As far back as 1981, the US quietly complained to the Turkish
ambassador about the sale of nuclear triggering devices to Pakistan. They
would ultimately be used to launch Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Of
course there is another country that operates the same way -- Israel.

Shining Beacon of Democracy?

Would it be a surprise that
The Policy Organization, the Attorney General and assorted US government
operatives tracking these activities would turn a blind eye to Turkey and
Israel’s trade in these types of goods? No. Why? Again, if Turkey and
Israel are so “damn” critical to the USA’s interests, then they can
operate around the globe with impunity, protected by names like Rumsfeld,
Cheney, Hastert, Scowcroft, Edelman, Bush and, once upon a time, Doug
Feith.

Meanwhile, back in Turkey,
the Turkish Press reported in August of 2005 that the military there
continues its top officer purges of Islamists, or those with questionable
religious connections, from the Army and Navy. That has been done with the
approval of Recip Tayip Erdogan who back in 1997 was banned from politics
for being overly Islamist. Turkey’s atrocious treatment of its Kurdish
population and it’s threat to invade Kurdistan -- now located in Northern
Iraq, go unnoticed in the US. Turkey has purchased 30 “Cobra-type” armored
vehicles from Otokor, a unit of Koc Holdings to bolster its fight against
a growing domestic Kurdish insurgency. And the Turkish military-industrial
complex has expanded by 30 percent since 2004.